Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I cannot get the background color function to work at all on spreadsheet. It works fine on writer.

If I copy some letters with background from writer and paste into spreadsheet, I get only the letters-no color.
If I use keys like "control", "Alt", "system", it highlights the cell black but still no background color.
I tried the format cell dialog box, no luck there either.

I just downloaded 4.1.7, same thing, no luck.

Any ideas please?

Calc spreadsheets simply don't support a character property for coloring the background. The spreadsheet cell itself supports a respective property for its area.

Texportions in Writer support the property .CharBackColor . TextTable cells can have colored areas. You need to set the color via the Table Properties dialog.

The color you defined this way should also copy paste to a spreadsheet if you copy complete cell ranges (may consist of a single cell explicitly selected). (I only tested with LibreOffice. Behavior should be the same.)

Thanks so much for the reply,,, however,,,, I still cant get it to work..? Im 95% sure I did what you described.

Have a look into the attached documents.

The target: The source:

Thanks Lupp.

Attached is how those docs look on my machine.

I assume they both had color on your end? Not mine, which causes me to think perhaps something on my machine has a conflict????
My first guess is some software which is Java based..??? Or bluetooth perhaps?

Can you upload a sample file (see: How to attach a document here)? It sounds rather weird.

Edit: I had read to fast the previous post. Hadn't seen that it was the result with the attachments from Lupp.

My example documents were made with AOO 4.1.5 and the .ods (freshly downloaded from my above post) still opens and displays correctly (including the colors) in that version.

Therefore I have to suspect AOO V4.1.7 (your version) has a regression bug concerning the way it reads/writes spreadsheet CellBackColor from/to the .ods files.

What happens if you color some cells directly and save/reload the file?
If that works for you, reopen the original download example, color cell D12 (only!), save the .ods file, and attach it to your next post as our basis for further research.

If you don't shy away from the task, you may also downgrade to AOO V 4.1.6 or 4.1.5 for your testing. If the example thn shows as it does for me, you will have also excluded the very faint possibility of your system (Win?) interfering with the document.

you may also downgrade to AOO V 4.1.6 or 4.1.5 for your testing.

There are Portable versions for trying - if you want not prompt uninstall the latest version.
https://portableapps.com/apps/office/op ... e_portable

The two documents opened correctly for me on OO4.1.7 running on Xubuntu 18.04.3 Perhaps a reset of the User Profile might help?

The two documents opened correctly for me on OO4.1.7

Same here on AOO4.1.7 and Win 10

Perplexed wrote:I just downloaded 4.1.7, same thing, no luck.

I understand that you were using a former version before.
For the record, the attachments from Lupp work fine on my portable version 4.1.5 (Windows 10), I get the colors in the ods.
Resetting the profile may indeed help.

Thanks for all the above helpful comments,
Yes, that is correct Hagar, I did upgrade to see if that would solve the problem.
I also reset the profile, as suggested, , by renaming the old file, then start the program, but still no change.

I did notice while reading instructions, that open office is not 64bit based yet...??
I do have 64 bit OS and Processor. Could that have anything to do with it?

As the problem is minor, I dont want to do too much to my PC to solve it, but if anything simple pops up, that would be great.

There is no 64bit version on Windows and it works fine nonetheless.
Very strange. No feature for high contrast? Couldn't explain why it would impact Calc and not Writer.

I did notice while reading instructions, that open office is not 64bit based yet...??

There is 64 bit version of the LibreOffice for Windows.

Try it, at least a portable version of the LO to see: if it works fine or not on your PC, in same environment.
There are winPenPack and PortableApps versions available.